“In a Jewish pilgrimage town in Ukraine, mermaids are part of the show,” headlines the israeli newspaper Ha’Aretz. One of his reporters traveled to Uman, in central Ukraine, where Hasidic Jews go to honor the grave of a famous 18th-century rabbi every year.e and XIXe centuries, for the feast of Rosh ha-Shana.
“Despite repeated warnings from Israeli, Ukrainian and US authorities,” add the log, “more than 23,000 pilgrims were in Uman on Sunday morning, according to the United Jewish Community of Ukraine”. Rosh ha-Shana, the celebration of the Hebrew New Year, began on the evening of Sunday, September 25 and will end on the evening of Tuesday, September 27.
“Although Uman, away from the front, is considered relatively safe, Ukrainian and Israeli officials have warned that it could be hit by missiles,” Explain The Wall Street Journal, in the USA. In the absence of civilian flights to Ukraine, pilgrims had to “land in Moldova or Poland before crossing the land border”.
A joyful fervor
Since the end of the USSR, these very pious Jews have become much more numerous to make the pilgrimage. “The faithful dance with exaltation, recite psalms chosen to make acts of repentance and engage in a solitary dialogue with God […]. During Rosh has-Shana, tents serving as synagogues pop up in the streets near the grave site; some are big enough to hold thousands of people,” tells the newspaper from testimonies.
Rabbi Nahman “preached a mystical Judaism emphasizing the spiritual immanence of God, with fervent and joyful worship. […] He asked his disciples to visit him in the new year”, adds the log. If these followers today are ultra-Orthodox, “his teachings permeate wider religious popular culture in Israel”.
If the crowds were a little less compact than in other years, the streets and the great synagogue of the city were still filled, testifies the journalist of Ha’Aretz. Saturday morning, as worshipers sang and danced in the synagogue housing the tomb, in a “chaotic mix” between different Sephardic and Ashkenazi groups, “nobody seemed bothered by the noise or even by the air raid sirens that pierced the din from time to time”, reports the Israeli newspaper.
“At the evening service […] no one even looked up when the sheltering alert sounded.”